Getty Museum

Tapestry: Don Quichotte guéri de sa folie par la sagesse, from L'Histoire de don Quichotte Series

Date

1773

Medium

Silk and wool

Culture

French

Department

Decorative Arts

Institution

Getty Museum

In a scene from the Gobelins tapestry series L’Histoire de Don Quichotte (The Story of Don Quixote), based on the enormously popular romance novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote sleeps in one of the chairs, dreaming of Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, who approaches in a cloud with her left arm extended to dispel his madness. His companion Sancho, who stands next to him, gazes in a trance at the figure of Folly, who carries in her right hand a model of a castle and in her left a pole with a fool’s cap. Tapestry weavers rendered the scene as if it were a painting in a gilt-wood frame, hung against a damask-covered wall, which is festooned with thick garlands of fruit and flowers. The picture frame rests on a base piled with armor, an axe, flags, and two cornucopias overflowing with fruit. The tapestry’s title is woven below in yellow thread. The same decorative field, known as the *alentours*, encloses each of the narrative scenes in the Getty Museum’s set of four Don Quixote tapestries.**

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